


Be Thou My Vision

by paperficwriter



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Worship, Bohemians, M/M, Moments of indiscretion, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 19:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20263243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperficwriter/pseuds/paperficwriter
Summary: On New Years Eve, 1899, a demon and an angel are actually together for the first time in quite a while. But they are in France again, and somehow Crowley always ends up having to save the day when they are there...





	Be Thou My Vision

**Author's Note:**

> Note: There are some references to events in the show, but I took liberties in the two seeing each other between the Fight in St. James Park and the Nasty Nazi Business.

Paris, 1899, in the neighborhood of Monmartre, a steady snow fell and covered the rooftops, the cold wind carrying the sound of can-can music from the nearby red windmill. Crowley had dragged Aziraphale to the Moulin Rouge to mingle with the bohemians, but when someone passed him a bottle of absinthe, some sugar and a metal spoon, he had lost track of him.

Now, though, it was almost midnight, and on New Years, it was utterly inappropriate for Crowley to _not_ be with his best friend (note: it was still easier to call it that - a friendship - than to label it as something different, or something that might get them too much attention from both the mortal and immortal worlds both. It seemed the popular thing to do among humans of similar presentation too, though Crowley had a feeling that would lead to some confusion later on…), especially since he was in the same city for once.

He took the steps of the apartment structure that had been built over a cafe two at a time, long legs demonically enhanced and leaving small sparks with each footfall on the landings, like struck flint. 

When he got to the loft, Aziraphale was staring out the window, a book against his chest, his chin in his hand. Crowley followed his gaze out over the city towards the Eiffel Tower, barely visible in the snow as it thickened. Although he reclined on the purple chaise lounge that Crowley had acquired for him (because he insisted that he hated sleeping, that it was unnecessary, that he would much rather stay up and read), there was a tension to his shoulders, and he pulled a thick, velvet coat around himself.

Compared to Crowley, who was bare but for suspenders and cotton slacks, he was quite overdressed.

“What’s with the coat, angel?” Crowley asked. By his internal clock, there was still about five minutes. Plenty of time.

“It’s quite stylish, I’ll have you know!” Crowley jerked back like a dog that had been admonished. Aziraphale rarely snapped at him (not counting when he deserved it), and he must have realized it too, because he quickly said, “I’m sorry, dear boy. Really, it’s not you I’m irritated with.”

“Right.” Crowley sat down beside him, plucking the book away and putting it down on the shelf next to them. “So. You’re irritated with—”

“Your friends!” Aziraphale raised his hand with a flourish and then brought it down on his knee. “Those bohemian boys of yours! I walked in just behind you and they cut me off and said I…” He trailed off, pouting into his collar. Aziraphale trailed off, pouting into his collar. Crowley had a love-hate relationship with that pout; it was so utterly adorable and yet he would sink ships and burn bridges both when someone made his angel upset.“They said I looked like some bourgeois pig, with my fancy clothes and _corpulence_, as they put it.”

“Your French accent really is terrible.” Crowley tugged at his sleeve.

“I know! Do you think that helped?!” Aziraphale crossed his arms over his chest, and the pout intensified to near-explosive lengths (Crowley would be the one doing the exploding). “I’m not an idiot,” he finally said. “I know I could change this form. I know that I could be less…of what I am, but I _like_ this body, Crowley. And I don’t like when people make me feel like I should be ashamed of it.”

In the distance, Crowley could hear the sounds of people counting backwards in French. Champagne was being shaken, lips puckering, the cold bellringer at Notre Dame (who actually had a very fine back, but a shit liver) grabbing the rope and beginning to pull…

And Crowley threw his hands up to Hea– well, he threw them up. And everything stopped.

Everything except Aziraphale, whose eyes focused on the snowflakes now hovering motionless in the air like stars. “Crowley, you know you are not supposed to do that! You’ll be reprimanded for sure–”

“Pah,” Crowley remarked, slouching onto the bed beside him. “If I can’t have New Years with you happy, then no one can have it.”

“That’s…a little dramatic, dear boy.” 

“It’s the turn of the century, angel! Let them wait on their little bohemian revolution.”

Aziraphale clicked his tongue at him, but didn’t actually make any further remarks on the situation. The world truly was so still when everyone wasn’t making such loud to-do’s about everything. 

“I’m not going to let it start like this, with you not appreciating how beautiful you are.”

He could _see_ the little jump in Aziraphale’s shoulders, and heard the sharp intake of breath. His round cheeks went a little rosy, and his warm hand found Crowley’s chilly one. “Crowley…” he whispered. 

It wasn’t their first kiss. But given that about forty years before, when Crowley didn’t think there would be any more kisses ever (foolish, thinking a fight would end anything – it never did, but it always felt that way _at the time_), now he would take it. He would delight in it, as he always did. Soft lips. A warm nose pressed into his narrow cheekbone. The smell of books and candlelight.

“We shouldn’t,” Aziraphale murmured, fingers hopelessly tangled in red hair and a suspender strap.

“That’s never stopped us before, angel.” It took two hands to get at the topcoat’s buttons. “You don’t have to cover up in all this.”

“What if someone is watching?” Aziraphale glanced both up and down, as if it needed to be clarified that he didn’t mean some passing Parisian pervert. 

He managed it, starting on the next set, talking as he went in that rapid-fire sinister sensuality that was so very, very much his style. “No one’s watching, and I’ll file it as a divine temptation. There I was, in Paris, promoting terrible imbibing of hallucinogenic drinks, when what to my wandering serpent eyes should appear, but an angel in doubt.”

“I’m not in doubt! Don’t even joke, Crowley!” The demon kissed the center of his furrowed brows, nuzzled there with his face until he relaxed. “There’s no holy oath against a little insecurity now and then.”

“I still won’t have it, angel.” There. The last of the damnable buttons undone. Who had been in charge of the last change in fashion? His side, or Upstairs? He wasn’t sure, but something needed to be done about the next trend to come. Burying his face against Aziraphale’s chest and soft stomach, he squeezed, hissing, overcome very suddenly by how much he loved this body, loved all of his constant companion. Which was so much not like what a demon should do, and that made him all the gladder to express it.

Aziraphale squeezed his head and held him just as near in turn. “You’re being positively ridiculous. You make it sound like you found me drowning in tears like the lead in some…Sarah Bernhardt play.”

“You really think that after so many thousands of years…” Crowley gazed up at him with his golden eyes, and he wondered for a second what they looked like, the two of them, in this affectionate embrace that was only intimate when you really peered at it. What kind of painting might they resemble? Caravaggio? Lomi? Rubens? “You really think I need to see you crying to know when you’re hurt?”

Aziraphale didn’t say anything, averting his eyes to his dress shirt and tutting. “I’m ruining your good time being so…”

“Vain?” he couldn’t help joke. 

“Don’t!” This time Aziraphale smiled, and he gently slapped his cheek. It didn’t even make a sound. “Do you, though?” he asked in a whisper. “Do you really think–”

Another kiss, a kiss for ‘yes.’ A kiss for ‘of course, silly clever thing.’ A kiss for ‘forever, from the start of Day One until the End.’ That was true. He was glad to be kissing him instead of saying it, how there was always fondness back when Heaven resembled sunken gardens and nebulas and sun-warmed clouds and not Versailles. And how when he first slithered his way back after All That Unfortunate Nonsense, he saw him standing there at the Eastern Gate and thought, ‘maybe’…right up until She gave him that sword and he smiled like the sun and Crowley - Crawly - fled the scene to talk to that lady about the apple.

Could he really blame him for going doe-eyed when he said that he had _just given it away?_

“Show me.” Damn the angel’s endearing eyes and his pitiful smile. 

“What do you think I’m doing exactly?”

“Show me more. Please. However will I be a true believer, and how will you be a true tempter?”

Crowley smirked. He had already lost. No amount of fussing over it would change that. Not that he wanted to. But he also couldn’t just give Aziraphale the satisfaction. With the wave of his hand, the shirt, the pants, everything but his sock garters and silky, knee-length drawers remained. They were open in the back, he could tell. Such was in the style. _That_ was his lot’s doing. “Animal!” Aziraphale scolded, but he was smiling and blushing.

“How can I appreciate you when you have to layer a hundred garments over the good parts?” Crowley slid down to his knees, chin tucked but eyes up. He lovingly kissed the softest part of his thigh. “Let us pray…”

“Crowley…” Aziraphale studied each press of lips, caress of fingers, slip of tongue, and he seemed to melt on the lounge until he was picked up in the demon’s strong arms. He leaned up to rest his forehead against Crowley’s, and it tingled a little, like lightning in the air at the top of a tower just as the stormcloud rolled in. It was where his halo would be. Where it perhaps still was.

He missed his wings, but he wouldn’t tell him that tonight. Because he would manifest them immediately and someone _would_ notice that time had stopped, because he would have his hands in them all night. 

The bed creaked under their bodies, Aziraphale on his back and Crowley sitting between his legs. He snapped his fingers and what remained of his own clothing was tucked away. All of it would be in the dresser by the door in the morning.. “I think it’s like…when people walk out into the sun,” Crowley said, coming up to touch around his knee, to appreciate their dimples before moving back up, sliding on his belly like the serpent that he was, that he still was even after all this time. “They hate how it gets in their eyes…makes them ssssweat…turn red…but who could ever actually hate the sun? How it always glows…”

He gave a peck to each side of his chest, the dip of his neck. When his hand slipped into the folds of Aziraphale’s undergarments, he was pulled down into that body that was as giving as goose feathers. He pecked at his neck. “You’re soft, angel.”

“I know,” he said, and it might have come out dejected if not for the moan of pleasure as he found warm, hard flesh to put his hand on. 

“Don’t ever think poorly of that. Not when it’s something I love about you. One of many things. Things I could very well die for.”

“Let’s…not talk about things like that now, dearest.” Aziraphale guided him into another kiss, and when he waved a hand downward, everything was gone, leaving them both blissfully as naked as they had come into the world (though perhaps looking a bit less humanish). 

“Aw. I like the garters.”

“Really? I can bring them back.”

“No, no.” Crowley squirmed out of his arms and knelt, gazing down at his whole visage there. Without the world turning, the scrutiny of his eyes was a slow drag of a bow across a cello. “This is perfect.”

Aziraphale messily hugged the pillow beside him against his face. Now, he truly did remind him of a cherub. “I’m ready for you, love.”

He returned to lying on top of him, the kiss coming with his sharp teeth for just a second, only enough to make Aziraphale gasp in a way that amused him as much as it aroused. “One day, I’ll have you start to finish. With all the preparations that they like to do with fingers and oil and…other things, maybe…”

“And one day,” Aziraphale echoed, stroking his cheeks, “may I be granted the patience to handle the wait.”

Crowley entered the sanctity of him.

Blissful wet, and tight. Always tight. But didn’t they all love their ideology around virgins, about every touch being like the first touch? Not that Crowley was complaining. Aziraphale’s body always responded like this was a gift, like this was a union. It was never just fucking with Aziraphale. At least not now. Not yet. Maybe that would be a ‘one day’ too, when these moments weren’t years apart. Sometimes centuries.

When momentary indiscretions could be something as commonplace as tea time and duck ponds.

“Crowley…oh, my darling…my…Crowley…”

“Aziraphale…”

They could end it at any time, but they never did. They always left this part of themselves so very _mortal_ at the end, so the natural progression could take over, so they could feel the other unraveling and know it wasn’t because of some magic trick.

Aziraphale was always ruined first. Pretty little thing, like he was starved for it, like it was a sweet treat that he had never had and might never have again. And, admittedly, then he might go back for seconds, as it were, but Crowley never pointed it out. All was the better for him.

When he spilled, it was like rising. And it only lasted a second, only ever a second, even when there were no seconds actually passing, like it was now. When he Fell, it was eternity. When he Rose, it was bobbing for just a moment and then settling back again.

But Aziraphale was always there, ready to hold him, to keep him from grieving.

“Go on,” the angel said now, his hair a mess across the pillows, curling up under the sheets like a cat. “I’m ready.”

“Oh, of course, if his _Majesty_ is ready.” Crowley kissed his nose, closed his eyes, and the snow fell again. The music swelled, and bells began to ring out. Everyone kissed, and they did too, and just like this, so still, Crowley could swear he could actually feel the world turn. 


End file.
